Obama should spurn Romney

Friday

Nov 30, 2012 at 6:00 AM

Clive McFarlane

I am all for bipartisanship, but President Barack Obama’s decision to have lunch with Mitt Romney yesterday and pick his brain for ideas on how to deal with the country’s fiscal challenges is … well … nutty.

“It will be a substantial lunch, if not on the plate then in discussion,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said the day prior to the lunch date.

“He obviously was a successful businessman, and I’m sure he has some ideas the president will find helpful.”

Some pundits are even speculating that Mr. Obama might even offer Mr. Romney a Cabinet post.

Let’s hope this is not so.

I would argue that rather than getting chummy with Mr. Romney, the president should instead keep him at arms length, and from having any influence over the levers of governmental power.

This, I believe, is the wish of the voters who supported the president for a second term.

Lest we have forgotten, Mr. Romney is the epitome of what is wrong with the economy.

He is a successful businessman, but his strategy is all about making money, and not about creating jobs, at least not here in this country.

He is very engaged and motivated in his efforts to insulate his money from the tax reach of Uncle Sam, even if it means hiding it in Swiss banks and other offshore accounts.

This is the presidential candidate who wrote off nearly half the electorate as takers and non-revenue producing residents and citizens of this country.

This is the guy who, after being vanquished in the election, suggested that the president won by giving “gifts” to supporters, “specifically the African American community, the Hispanic community and young people.”

Among these so-called gifts, according to Mr. Romney, are Obamacare and the Dream Act amnesty program, which calls for an end to the deportation of undocumented immigrants who entered the country as children and to grant these eligible immigrants work permits.

The idea that African-Americans and Latinos were given special treatment during Mr. Obama’s first term is ludicrous at best.

While the fallout from the Bush years, including the meltdown on Wall Street, adversely impacted Americans across the board, the impact was deeper in minority communities.

According to the Census Bureau, for example, the percentage of adult African-Americans in poverty rose from 19.8 percent in 2007 to 23 percent in 2010. Among African-American children, the poverty rate rose from 34.5 percent to 39.1 percent.

The unemployment rate among African-Americans was about 12 percent, when the president took office. It is now around 14 percent.

While Mr. Romney was talking about undocumented immigrants self-deporting, Mr. Obama was deporting more than 1.5 million undocumented immigrants during his first term, a deportation rate nearly twice that of his Republican predecessor.

African-Americans and Latinos voted for the president because, despite their respective challenges, the president genuinely wanted to help them do better.

Mr. Romney’s prescription for them, however, was abandonment.

Remember, he is the presidential candidate who stayed silent while his party used voter suppression as a tool in trying to help win him the election.

By the way, people on the left are not the only ones making this voter suppression charge.

Jim Greer, former chairman of the Florida Republican Party and former Gov. Charlie Crist, following the election, have publicly acknowledged that Republican Party strategists concertedly limited early voting in Florida to reduce the Democratic turnout.

According to a Palm Beach Post article, Mr. Greer said Republican strategists and consultants firmly believe “early voting is bad” for the party.

“They never came in to see me and tell we had a (voter) fraud issue,” he said. “It’s all a marketing ploy.

“The sad thing about that is yes, there is prejudice and racism in the party but the real prevailing thought is that they don’t think minorities will ever vote Republican. It’s not really a broad-based racist issue.

“It’s simply that the Republican Party gave up a long time ago ever believing that anything they did would get minorities to vote for them.”

It is understandable why the president would want to be magnanimous, but by giving legitimacy to Mr. Romney, he runs the risk of being seen by many of his supporters as being just another etch-a-sketch politician. Someone who, like Mr. Romney, does not hold any true convictions.